


stuck in our skins and singing

by gointorosedale



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Panic Attacks, actually damaged by the stuff she's gone through!belle, comforting!rumple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 13:55:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gointorosedale/pseuds/gointorosedale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Have enough nightmares about cages and you'll wake up feeling caged still. Rumplestiltskin may have a solution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stuck in our skins and singing

**Author's Note:**

> Because I refuse to believe that Belle doesn't suffer at least a little for all the years she's spent locked up, and because Belle just had too much angst potential for me to pass up.

Belle wakes with a start, bolting upright in bed. She's hot, sweat-slick bedsheets sticking to her skin, heart feeling like it's skipping every other beat as she blinks against images of a dark damp cell and heavy iron bars. When her vision clears, everything is dark save for a thin sliver of moonlight glinting off the wooden furniture and Belle is panting.

Her hands are trembling as she pulls the covers off and stumbles out of bed, nearly falling over. The bed is empty now and Belle is sure Rumplestiltskin is spinning in his basement but she doesn't have it in her to care. She feels restless and half-aware, fear still thrumming under her skin as she remembers the hard stone floor under her back, the smell of moss growing on the walls. On some nights she could hear the noise of people in the distance, a spring fair or something, and she'd wanted to scream but her voice was raw no sound would come.

Now Belle stumbles down the stairs in the dark, through the silence of and empty house. It's not as large as the Dark Castle but it's cluttered and full of Rumplestiltskin's odds and ends, prizes from deals he's made, and sometimes in the dark it feels claustrophobically full. Belle feels it now, a sort of heavy hemmed-in feeling as she sees the boxes upon boxes of things stacked in the guest room, the array of objects in the living room. She's near panic when she finally gets to the back door and forces it open.

Getting her first breath of fresh air, she inhales for as long as possible, eyes closed, almost rising up on her toes to feel as much of it as possible. Not the dank smell of a dungeon nor the clean antiseptic smell of the hospital. Only a warm summer night and the smell of sea salt.

Belle exhales in relief and stumbles along the stones until she reaches the grass, soft and damp underneath her bare feet. She feels sick with fear, feverish and out of sorts and panic has lodged itself firmly in her throat.

She lets herself fall onto the grass on her knees, sitting back on her heels and looking up at the night sky. It feels heavenly to be able to look up and see nothing but stars, the endless expanse of blue-black. In her cell in the hospital she'd spent hours looking up out of the window. She hadn't even been looking for people to help her so much as freedom as a concept, wanting to see the great wide _out there_ that she never got.

Those days were strange and confusing – never knowing who she was, why she was locked up. Wondering if maybe she hurt someone, just what she had done to deserve this. Some nights when it was dark out and silent in the hospital, Belle questioned whether there was anyone out there in the world at all.

In comparison, her days in Regina's cell were better. Then, at least, she had a glimmer of hope.

Belle brushes her hands across the grass, feeling the damp earth gather under nails. Breathes in, breathes out. Feels fresh air in her lungs and safety and exaltation, feels like laughing but can't quite get her lungs to cooperate and in the end it comes out a sob, broken and raw.

Once she's started she can't stop and Belle isn't sure if she's laughing or crying, if she's happy to be free of her cell or devastated because she _isn't_ , because she still dreams about constricting rooms and wakes up too scared to scream. She still feels a shiver of fear when locking the bathroom door and always showers with the curtain left open and sometimes when Mary Margret's class comes by the library and the children crowd close around her Belle feels her face crumple into panic and Mary Margret has to herd them away.

It's so stupid but sometimes Belle feels like she's still locked up, like she'll always be locked up one way or another. Sometimes Belle feels like she's always being locked away in one form or another. First her engagement to Gaston, then her deal with Rumplestiltskin, then her cell in Regina's castle, then the hospital, then Lacey.

It feels like Belle spends more time trying to break free from prisons of all sorts, rather than actually being free. Even now that there's nothing constraining her and she's free, outside – nothing but a nightgown keeping the cool air from her skin – and still she feels the clawing urge to get away. Like she's so used to trying to escape that the feeling has buried itself in her bones and won't let go even when she is free.

Belle cries – great, hitching, ugly sobs, with snot running down her nose and her hair sticking to her face. Cries because she can never seem to be free and because she's tired of trying and because it's four AM and she can't even get through a simple summer night without _this._ Rumple and her had a lovely dinner this evening and they sat on the sofa and read and chatted and went to bed together and he stayed with her until she fell asleep, petting her hair with a fond smile, and then Belle went and ruined it.

Belle doesn't hear Rumplestiltskin approach, but she sees his bare feet appear in front of her and the vulnerability of it catches her off guard, makes her pause and look up. He crouches down in front of her, wincing at the ache in his leg, and holds out a hand.

“Belle, what's wrong?”

Belle shakes her head and backs away and she feels stupid for her own panic but Rumplestiltskin wants to hold her, she can see it in his eyes, and the thought of having his arms around her makes the frantic terror in her gut churn.

He sits down then, stretching his bad leg out on the grass. His face, when Belle can bring herself to focus on it through the tears, is heartbroken and it only makes Belle feel worse but the flooding panic is ebbing now that she has something to focus on.

“Belle,” he says again and he reminds Belle of one of her maids – Rela, Belle remembers, red-haired and delicate with rough hands – reaching out to a stray cat, voice soft and posture as small and non-threatening as possible.

Belle blinks and scrubs away tears, lets her arms fall to her sides and lets her legs fall forward so her posture mirrors his. Rumplestiltskin doesn't finish whatever he was going to say, or maybe he never had anything to say but her name. Belle feels like that sometimes, something so grand and omnipotent that Belle can't bring herself to say much more than his name as she touches a hand to his cheek. _Names have power,_ Rumplestiltskin always says and maybe that's what he means.

Belle exhales heavily. “I'm sorry,” she says in a small voice, broken and raw. Their feet are almost touching and she wiggles her toes to touch his. The contact is small and non-threatening and Belle feels a little better for it, especially when Rumplestiltskin indulges her and repeats the gesture. She gives a watery giggle at that.

“Nothing to be sorry for, dear,” he says, voice gentle and pained.

Belle hurts at that, too, because Rumplestiltskin has so much to ache for and the fact that she is only adding to it makes her feel locked up and small all over again. She should be making this better, she thinks, not worse.

Belle laughs, an almost bitter, Lacey-like sound. “I stormed out of the house in the middle of the night in my nightgown because I dreamed about my cell.” She always says that, _my_ cell. Maybe she's spent so many years locked up she's come to feel strangely possessive of it because of all the things in the world she never got, her cell, at least, was hers. _If I can't know anyone, can't I at least know you,_ Belle remembers with a sense of irony.

“It's a good thing we don't have any neighbors nearby,” she adds as an afterthought.

Rumplestiltskin smiles a little at that, at least. “Don't worry about that,” he says kindly. “I can honestly say I am long past the point of caring what the neighbors think.”

Belle sighs, looks down at her fidgeting hands. As a lady, she'd always been taught not to fidget, to keep her hands folded behind her back or over her stomach. No one ever taught her the etiquette for storming out of your lover's house in the middle of the night because the walls were closing in and you were afraid you could never again breathe another breath of fresh air in your life.

“I'm sorry anyway. I know I'm free now, I know I can leave whenever I want.”

Even to her own ears, Belle sounds like she's reciting a doctor's words, empty promises meant to keep her calm.

“But that doesn't always help.”

“No,” Belle agrees. It feels like a failure to admit that and she doesn't like burdening Rumplestiltskin with it. He has so many issues of his own and Belle feels like she should be the good in his life, the one thing untouched by darkness. Instead she feels it roll around inside her stomach now,tainting her like poison.

Rumplestiltskin nods. “Would you like to go for a walk?”

Belle blinks at him, eyes flicking from their nearly-touching feet to his face. He's looking at her with nothing but sympathy and love. “What?”

“A walk, love, would you like to take a walk with me?”

Belle swallows and nods. “I'd like that, I think.” Her voice is surprisingly soft after the earlier rawness. There's an undertone of gravel that makes her heart clench, but she sounds almost like herself again. Almost free.

Belle pushes herself to her feet and Rumplestiltskin is struggling to get up but he can't quite manage with his bad leg, so Belle reaches a hand out to him, wiggling her toes in the soft grass to remind herself that she is outside and uncaged.

As soon as Rumplestiltskin is upright, he lets go of her hand. Instead, he hobbles towards the nearby table and picks up his cane, which he'd apparently left there while Belle was crying her eyes out. Belle watches him, feeling confused and grateful and shivery with emotion.

It's a warm night, but once they've made their way through the house and are standing outside on the street, Rumplestiltskin disappears into the house. He shows up again a moment later with her jacket, which he hands to Belle. She takes it and puts it on, watching Rumplestiltskin. He's watching her, waiting patiently, and when she finally feels ready to go she holds out a hand to him.

Rumplestiltskin takes it and gestures towards the empty street, dark town. “Lead away,” he says with a softness that Belle will never get used to.

Belle nods and starts down the street, relishing in the feeling of the rough stone under her bare feet as Rumplestiltskin follows.

He doesn't ask if she feels any better and Belle doesn't take the time to analyze if she does, but instead she focuses on the stone under her feet, grounding and solid and real, the sky over her head with its endlessly promising dark, and the road that will lead as far as Belle wants to go.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I like to talk and feel like adding this, and also because this was a strange one for me to write: this was inspired by two things. One was the poem Bridge Song (to Angel Nafis) by Jeanann Verlee which I urge everyone to read and specifically this:
>
>>   
> I sobbed because he was gone, and that man held me, Angel.  
> Held me like a father holds rage, arms tight across as lifejacket.  
> Shuddered like that ’til daybreak. He whispered, _I want this wreckage _.__  
> 
> 
> The second is a thing a teacher once told me when I was sad and tired, which was to focus on my feet and the steps I was taking. It seems really silly, but it was surprisingly good advice and I'm very grateful for it.


End file.
